Audio Recordings

The MPLP is currently working with audio recordings of Postone, and we intend to make these available on the website.

The Recordings

The audio recordings include Postone’s courses on the Frankfurt School, which were two-term seminars addressing first-generation critical theorists and Habermas. They further include his course on contemporary transformations of capitalism, in which he engaged with theorists like David Harvey, Robert Brenner, and Giovanni Arrighi. We have begun by focusing on a third set: recordings of his seminars on Marx’s Capital. We are delighted to make some of these latter recordings available via the SoundCloud links on this page.

Seminars on Capital

Postone taught graduate seminars on Marx between the 1990s and 2017. In some iterations, this was intended to be a multi-term sequence, covering the three volumes of Capital. In the later terms of such sequences, Postone would often begin with a brief review of his reading of Capital, Volume 1. The first set of recordings that we are sharing, titled “Capital Vol.1 Review,” is drawn from one such review from January 2015. We hope that it provides a clear introduction to some of the core concerns of his reading and his theory. It is in three parts and approximately seven hours long in total. 

The second set of recordings is from the 2017 iteration of the multi-term course on Capital. It includes material from 15 classes, first reviewing Marx’s early texts, and then covering Volumes 1 through 3. The recordings are titled in reference to the texts addressed in a given class. While Postone taught the courses in seminar style, the recordings have been edited to foreground lecture elements and his extended expositions.

Postone had been developing a book project that could serve as a companion to the three volumes of Capital. These recordings are especially important, as his reading and teaching notes and his classroom engagement represent his most advanced thinking on that project. 

Future Projects

We intend to make other courses and audio recordings available here in the future, so please check back for updates. We also are hoping to assemble a full archive of extant recordings, so if you possess some that you think we might be missing, please do contact us. Finally, editing and sharing the audio and visual material on this website is especially dependent on further funding, so if you find the recordings helpful and the project important, please consider donating to the MPLP.